Can we please talk about grief?
Tw: Grief, parent loss, mentions of mental health issues
Look, I'm starting to see more accurate representations of grief in media but so often is shown in such an unrealistic way that makes my skin crawl and sometimes that bad representation makes me feel like I'm in the wrong for how I've experienced grief.
My mum died when I was five. It sucked. It still sucks. It will always suck. I know that, anyone who has a similar experience knows that. Yet sometimes I'll pick up a book and boom parent dies, completely over it in three days or a week or some insane shit.
I'm eighteen now. I spent my entire time in school after my mum died being bullied in some form or another. I had to move schools in the middle of the school year, I lost my closest friends, and every single thing in my life was different. The only thing that has actually felt consistent in that entire time is grief.
In books, grief is something you can get over, something that fades. In real life its not.
I'll be going about my day and suddenly I'm bombarded with this deep longing for my mum. It happens for no reason, it happens when I see happy families, it happens all the time, and its been happening for the last fourteen years.
I'm writing all this out right now because I was hit by that sudden and dreaded thought, 'what would my mum think of me now?' And I need a place to vent about grief. What better than the black hole of the Internet?
I was once told 'you need to get over it' in reference to my grief for my mum. And to that I say, fuck you, you heartless bitch.
Grief doesn't go away. It stays, it hovers around the edges. You get better at dealing with it, sure, but its still there. You don't just stop missing someone who you had for so long and was suddenly gone from your life.
Grief shows in strange ways. Some of my most common thoughts are
Would she be proud of me?
What would she think of me?
Am I living up to her expectations?
Am I too much like her?
Am I the kid she wanted me to be?
These thoughts suck.
When your young and your mum is freshly dead and everyone around you is still mourning and just as hurt they'll tell you she'd be proud they'll tell you she'd love you. But when your 18 and trying your damn fucking hardest to find a way to live and still be yourself, no one tells you those things.
Grief haunts. Grief is the ghost in the corner of the room and grief is the monster stalking you.
You learn to live with you, you learn to move on around it. But you're never the same.
I broke at five, and I've never been me since. I'm still me, just not the me i would be if my mum was still alive.
That side if grief is never shown in media and it fucking sucks. I'm never gonna pick up a book with a character whose parents are dead and read a scene that so perfectly encapsulates that pain. That sudden, 'god what would she think of me now?'. That side of grief is so often left behind.
I've been to a grief counciling sort of thing and a lot of it was geared to getting over grief not learning to life with it. This course was specially aimed at kids who lost a parent. Imagine that, being young, clearly depressed and you're sent to a place for grief even though your mental health issues aren't connected to the grief, not anymore, and every last thing is aimed at getting over it.
They, being my school guidance team, sent me there to help and it made it worse! Because there i was, eight, nine, years after my mum had died nkt yet over it and all these people around me whose parents had more recently and all the advice was geated towards getting over it.
Grief isn't something you get over! And I'm fucking sick of it being portrait that way. My grief is part of me now, I've learned to live with it.
Sure, sometimes ill still cry myself ti sleep missing my mum. But thats fine because I was five and my mum was my closest person and she was ripped from me. One day I had here, the next I didn't. I'm going ti spend the rest of my life missing her. And that is ok. It is so ok.
In short, I'm yet to see grief shown in media in an accurate way, I'm yet to receive grief counseling that isn't about getting over it, and I'm yet to see other people talk about how grief actually is for them.
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ur a grown ass woman... that feels uncomfortable writing smut, kinda sad
I am this close to losing my shit I swear to-
WHY DOES IT MATTER SO MUCH, HON??
IM ACTUALLY SO CONFUSED. why does it matter to you people that I am NOT comfortable writing it??
I do not see this much backlash with other writers, so why me?
No. Honest question.
👏why do you people feel that it's NECESSARY to bombard me for smut👏
I do not write it, suck it up buttercup because my rules are not changing
I could recommend you some lovely smut writers, but I don't want you to take your attitude to them.
Some AMAZING people, who by the way, WRITE SMUT. Are the following
For anyone 18+ who is actually CURIOUS and RESPECTFUL who wants this kind of content.
@2faced-fairy
@honeyedbumblebee
@warringwarrioridiot
And a few more (I do not remember a lot of usernames I'm so sorry)
These writers are SO talented and actually WRITE what you are looking for. But no
You have to come to someone who is very insistent on NOT writing it.
You come onto MY blog, and be rude to ME. Because I don't want to write sexual intercourse
Now THAT IS what's sad.
And if you're gonna have this attitude don't even go to those people's pages.
Because if that's the ugly ass attitude you're gonna have with me?
Then don't expect other writers to fulfill your requests.
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spoilers for ofmd s2e8 - a discussion of the decision to do That to You Know Who
i guess my biggest issue is that you should have seen the end coming because it makes sense narratively, so in a way you did see it coming, but the show has spent two seasons subverting expectations and chucking logic out the window, so in the context of the universe they've created it fucking doesn't make sense.
I know it narratively makes sense to tie Izzy's arc off like this, but this show has gone to great fucking lenghts to show it doesn't give a toss about sense or how you're supposed to tell a story. The plot armour has been so thick for two seasons it's genuinely ridiculous, but that's the show and now this is the audience it's amassed. You think I've spent all this time watching these idiots strut around an ocean the size of a bathtub powered by nothing but spite and a gaydar because I value logic above all else? You think I like the show despite it's narrative insanities, not because of it?
Spending a season on Izzy's emotional and mental journey only to kill him off in the end does makes a certain literary sense. Him dying surrounded by the family he finally accepted and who accepted him in turn makes literary sense. His death allowing Ed to let go of the last of Blackbeard makes literary sense.
In the real world.
But we've spent two seasons in Pirate Muppet Land, with it's bathtub size ocean where everyone can find anyone, where wounds heal the moment they're patched up, where crocs and paparazzis paperazzis exists in 18th century. I'm not here for realism, I'm here for the insanity. I'm here for the workplace romcom where this community of queer idiots can laugh and cry and have their drama and, yes, a boatload (ha) of angst but it's fine because it is about them, the plot only there to further their personal journeys no matter how unrealistic that plot turns out to be. They created Something, something new and different and hopeful, and then made a single decision that went against everything they'd built so far because? Logic? I genuinely don't know.
Ultimately I'm happy with this season. I had so much goddamn fun. I enjoyed the ending, though for the personal journeys it concluded rather than story it actually told. This season was way too rushed, for which I assume we should largly blame HBO. The cast and crew did what they could with what they had.
Still though.
I said at some point during this season that I "genuinely can’t see a scenario where they kill off any of the crew, it’s just not that kind of show". Turns out it decided to be that kind of show, with the worst decision they could make. Killing off Izzy does make literary sense. Which, in context of the show so far, makes it goddamn unrealistic.
It's not a good plot twist to pull the rug from out under the audience if the rug is actually a carpet floor you've spent the whole season nailing down.
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